21.7.13

3D PRINTED SUGAR

The Sugar Lab has just lifted 3D printing to a whole new level. Liz and Kyle von Hasseln, with a backround in architecture, are about to bring the 3D printing technology to the genre of mega-cool cakes. Creating a paradigm shift this technology makes it possible to design, digitally model and print an utterly original sugar sculptures on top of a cake.

The Sugar Lab started about two years ago, when Liz and Kyle were still graduate students in architecture. The project initially started of as an idea of printing a birthday cake for a dear friend of theirs.

‘As for the actual printing process, if you’ve ever made frosting and left the mixing bowl in the sink overnight, you know that moistened sugar gets quite hard.’ This is the underlying concept of 3D printing with sugar. The two of them used mixture of water and alcohol, applied very precisely in a layer-wise manner, to selectively wet and harden the sugar substrate. The process is fundamentally similar to other 3D printing applications; they’ve just optimized the process for resolution and strength with sugar, rather than with a standard 3D printing material.